Candle Blown
by drunkontheideathatislove
Summary: As Kakashi lay on the forest floor, he finds himself contemplating over one particular regret, and wishes he can do it all over again, just so he can finally do it right.
1. Last Breath.

**I was never able to tell her that I love her**...

I want to laugh at the idiocy of it all. Of course, the regret comes right before I die. Of course, I'm dying with the regret I'll carry to the next life. If there ever _is _one. I hope there is. I hope in another life, I'd be able to brace myself for the fall. I hope I could make her feel the same. I hope I could make everyone understand the depth of my feelings, so she wouldn't have to hear about their shallow renditions and twist it to something it isn't. Better yet, I hope circumstances would change for us. I hope I get to meet her at a later time, so I wouldn't be accused of grooming her. I hope I wouldn't be her teacher, and she wouldn't be my student, so I wouldn't feel the burden of maintaining professionalism when my concern for her runs deeper than that. Or that our age gap wouldn't be as wide as ours, in this lifetime. _'Huh, I guess I won't have to worry about that now. Soon, she'd turn 34, and I would still remain 34, and she would have surpassed me by then. She'd be older than me by then. And she would be likely married, too. Maybe Sasuke will come back, and she would finally have the love story she's always dreamt of having. Pity it isn't ours, huh.'_

_..._...

I am breathing labored breaths now. But I hardly recognize the trouble at all, because if this is what dying feels like, then it isn't so bad at all, to intoxicate myself to thoughts of her and feel my life drown away in those green orbs. Or that curtain of silken pink. Or the sound of her rich laugh ringing and sending an instant smile on my face now that I think of it. Still, I wish I could've just told her and be done with it. Say it like a no-nonsense thing, the way I always have. Even if it isn't. _I just really wish I told her; said something to her. _

...

I wish I could've told her about the letters I wrote in her honor, but was too stubborn to hand over. Even if the chance of her getting headaches than getting tingles was relatively high, I wish I could've _just _risked it. I wish I could've handed over to her the key to the drawer that held all those letters and a small summer bouquet that now lay wilted and dry in there, and let her discover about that fateful day when she cried over my broken body, and I just thought _'oh fuck it'_, and decide right then and there to court her and try to win her heart, before I got swallowed by my guilt and self-remorse at the last minute. I wish I just really went and _fucked _it. I wish I never thought of it as sordid and terribly wrong. Because here, right now, dying without telling her how _thoroughly _smitten I have been with her since three years ago, feels incredibly _wrong_

_.__..._...

But I guess there's nothing left to say and do about that now. I got my chance when I thought I didn't want to pursue it, so here's to life laughing at me the whole damn time. At least she wouldn't see my dead body. The night will come and with it, wild dogs hungry for whatever remains of me. _At _least she wouldn't have to see my broken and mangled remains, won't have to see the regret forever contemplated in my eyes, won't have to know how I spent my dying moments thinking of her, and all of the moments preceding it.

...

I can't help the gnawing regret though, more than I can stop my blood from seeping out of my body to fall humbly back to the earth. _'Kami, please tell me there is another life you've written for me. I realize it all now, and I just can't. I thought if I lived in solitude and distanced myself from everyone else, I could protect myself from the familiar pang of pain at the death of everyone that had been close to me. My father, Minato-sensei, Obito and Rin. But I now realize how wrong I have been. At least they all died knowing that they loved with everything that they were. And here I am, a fool in love, too afraid to tell Sakura and too unsure of what to say until the very last moment. Please tell me this is not the deadend. Please. I want to tell her, in another life, how she managed to heal and open my heart at the same time. Kami, I don't know if I can accept this fate. There has to be something out there. There has to be. Please tell me there is. Please tell me that after this life, I get to wake up to watch another retelling of my story. One where I'm braver. Smarter. More in love and less afraid. Please tell me I can love her again, that I get another chance to do it right. Please. That is all I ask. I've never asked for anything since I was five, but please grant me just this one thing. I know it's not small and trivial, but my life depends on it. I know, I'm dying. But please. You must hear me. Please take my life, and let me breathe again. Let me love her again. Let me show to her how much I appreciate her healing chakra every time it courses through my body, for it is the closest that I could possibly be to being with her. Let me take her to lunch and dinner, without fencing away from the bills this time. Let me show her how serious I am with keeping her safe while she's in my arms. Let me make it up to her by teaching her all over again. This time, with the pathways of my heart. I want her to learn and map out just how many pains and aches she has punched through; how she made it all the way in. I want her to know me again, without the mask or Icha Icha hiding what's underneath the underneath. Everything that I feel for her, please give me the chance to lay bare. I want her to see the happiness she's caused me, just by her presence and time.'_

_..._...

I know it's futile to ask, but I just can't slip away from this life without trying to bargain even though I know I don't have the right. My life isn't much, but my love still remains. I now know how much of a waste it is, to keep it hidden away. With my last breaths, I rest my case, and watch as the horizon lazes to darkness, with nothing in mind but her bright smile.

**In another life, I'll search for your smile, and ****Kami forbid me if I let you slip away one more time.**

**...****...****.**

**_Fin ._**

**...**

A/n:

1\. Yo. Sorry if this wasn't the GaBin update y'all been waiting for and I've been stalling on. I was just on high with KakaSaku lately, and I just had to get this out of my head before I regret (winkwink) it.

2\. Nothing much, stay hydrated folks.

3\. Don't be like Kakashi. Tell the og you love them. Love is always a risk worth taking. If it isn't worth risking, it ain't love.

4\. Look at my single ass talking nonsense. Could follow my own advice.

5\. Guess imma die now.


	2. The Book

_My life isn't much. But my love still remains._

The Book of life knows it all. It writes everything known as history; and everything that precedes it. It chooses what the verdict is for everyone.

It chooses the verdict for what Kakashi's life becomes.

The goal, for a person to be written in the Book is simple: To have loved in full. Anyone who hasn't fulfilled the task, anyone who has experienced little to none, or those who gave unwillingly and selfishly, even those who almost got it inside their hands, only to have it taken away from them, is bound for infinitesimal happiness in the afterlife. The Book only celebrates those who have done their part and accomplished the reason for their being. Those who are no longer on earth and remains unwritten, are only written really as cracks in the sidewalk; _failures in the system_.

But the Book gives second chances to anyone who _pleads for it._ It understands grief more than anyone; it is the reason for it's being. It could only celebrate love and happiness in the end. But he could, he could not, could not allow, someone he has watched for all its life, slither away to nothingness just because of one small lapse of judgment. Kakashi underestimated happiness. _His happiness._

Here was a man, who no matter how shaped and informed he was because of life, could not help himself question everything the moment love introduced itself to him for the hundredth time, only this time, with the promise to remain forever. This was a man so wronged in the past, that it starts to define him; starts to let him feel everything he's feeling right, to be the wrong thing.

And Sakura. _Oh_, dearest. The girl who's life and role in the Book is now forever altered because of Kakashi's lapse in judgment. Here was a girl, oblivious to the reality that the love she's been dreaming of having for all her life, could actually be hers. If he only acknowledged the chance.

And so goes, Kakashi has predicted it right. She will marry the Uchiha and start a family she will love and be proud of all her life. She will have a daughter anyone would ask for, and she will feel lucky, but she will not feel loved. The actions and words will not suffice. The ink will dry out immediately before she could even grasp the meaning of how the death of one shinobi, prompted the way her life spiraled out. She will feel love, but she will be deprived of it. No love would ever be enough for her no matter how much she gives, no matter how much she shares, no matter how much is given and shared to her. It will only reek of what lacks.

_The biggest could have, is love._

It is the only could have that matters. It is the only thing in the whole expanse of the universe, that could alter everything in one's own history, and his shared history with another.

The Book decides.

It will give another chance to the Could Have that is Kakashi and Sakura.

A rewind.

_But in another life._


	3. Chapter 1

**The Hospital He Sleeps At**

_Kakashi wakes._

No, he jolts into a sitting position. Tried to. But a pair of strong, sure hands presses him down, and he feels his entire body catch up to what it is feeling all throughout. Soreness. Indescribable tiredness. He sinks back, and his body tries to resist.

_Paranoia;_ he registers the feeling as someone coaxes him to calm down. But he doesn't really hear it. He doesn't hear anything. There's ringing inside his head, and the sounds distort around him, but the comfort exudes somewhere, _somewhere. _And so the comfort allows him to hear whosever voice it was.

"Sir, please don't try to get up. We need to calm down. You're safe here, no one's out to harm you. We need you to rest, okay?," he shifts into lucidity; the dreamlike voice vaguely familiar and all-consuming. "There. See? It's not so hard." The voice is starting to haunt him in all its comfort and familiarity. _No, I am being paranoid. Why am I here? What happened? Where is the girl with the green ey_—

A barely felt pat on his left shoulder. And then, a massive headache.

Kakashi screams.

_And screams._

_And screams._

The hands become heavier, no longer comforting. More voices. Kakashi screeches and pants, blind to everything. He's frantic, trying to search for the voice again. Somehow, that's the only thing he knows can calm him. _Where is it? Why_—_ why am I here? _The comforting voice appears amidst the others; consoling, gentle, and so so familiar. But the damage has been done. There is now a sharp ringing in his ears like everything is out of place. Like he is not supposed to be here. Why is he here? Kakashi scrambles, searches inside his brain, flings around; his whole being trying to make sense of everything. But he's in a vortex he has no knowledge of.

He only remembers two instances. His name. And the memory of unmistakable Viridian eyes.

Kakashi succumbs to the darkness again.

* * *

The ID clip lifelessly flings around at the sound of her footsteps echoing through the empty hallways of the stark white hospital. She touches her face and fixes her glasses high up her nose and rearranges her hair into a slightly messy ponytail, her now long bangs hanging sideways, framing her face and making her forehead more prominent— she learned not to care a long time ago. But certain habits persist; she fixes what need not be fixed.

"Dr. Haruno? Do we have a name for your patient yet?" , A junior doctor catches up to her. She checks his ID, she has a tendency to forget names easily.

"No, I'm afraid not," Sakura sighed, contemplating how to solve the man's identity. "He has no identification with him. He didn't carry anything. No wallet, no phone, even his clothes were a bit...eccentric."

"He's so interesting, no? Probably the most interesting patient we have in our midst since that crazy man who claimed he was a Shinobi. Huh. Whatever is with this hospital, it sure does attract some weird _weird _patients inside."

"Careful what you say, Dr. Kabuto. The next time some weird patient arrives, I might be looking at you." She winks and turns another way- towards the room of the unidentified male patient refusing to wake up.

"Well, I should go. See you around, Doctor."

"Yes, see you around Doctor Haruno."

* * *

The door swings open, and it has been the only sound heard in this particular room since, well, since yesterday. Where the door swung open as well. And the day before that. But the man persists to sleep peacefully amidst the mystery laid heavy inside the room.

Sakura walks up to two steps before the bed. She purses her lips in thought— the same thoughts nagging her for quite some time now. This man, and the man she runs her eyes over in her patient records, and the man she met in a storm a month ago, she's almost convinced they're one and the same.

She wonders what happened to him.

The records say that he has been found by an old lady bleeding profusely in her backyard. Concussion, a deep gash on the forehead, back injury, lacerations all over the body, Sakura could go on and on. It's almost as though the man was trying to be a fine example for anyone interested to see just how many injuries there are possible to get acquainted with.

So far, the police had been back twice. But the man persists on his right to remain silent. He should be waking up soon. Sakura looks at the clock on the wall, and then checks her own watch, and then phone. Everything is timed correctly. _He should be awake soon. _

Why Sakura cares as much as she is intrigued, she has no idea. It is natural for her to worry for her patients; it isn't natural to constantly waste one's own time at work flinging around theories inside her head while staring at the man all those theories are based upon. She's becoming a freak. She should be freaking.

But the storm that happened a month ago is still so intricately carved inside her mind, she still scrambles sometimes to get herself out of the gutter and stop making weird connections between that guy and this, _this_ man over here.

She couldn't help herself though.

* * *

The book of life goes over the new lines and slightly feels guilty for Kakashi's disorientation and paranoia as he calls it.

_Well, he'll live. Right now, that's what's important._


	4. Chapter 2

**The Moment He Wakes**

There was something that happened, not too long ago. Sometimes, when Sakura gets coffee and silently reads, her mind falters and blinks; the fresh memories occupying her mind all over again.

She tries to renew and rewind everything she remembers every time she thinks back on those moments in the forest, trying to take note of new discoveries she missed the last time, or to make sense of whatever it is that refused to make sense in her mind.

The man in the hospital is still not waking. But he's out of the coma. She heard him dream and whisper her name.

This forges everything that she has been pondering on since three days prior. The man knows her, or else there was someone else in his life with the same name as her. When the accompanying nurse, Haku, heard him mumble the three-syllable name, he all but turned to her with a snapping speed. 'The man talked. He talked your name,' was what he meant by his stare.

Yes, he talked. And worse, he said her name.

If this is really going according to what she thinks is happening, then perhaps she's the only one who can currently give a name to the guy.

_Kakashi. _He said his name was Kakashi.

But he disappeared as soon as he said it.

Sakura had been confused by the disappearance, worried about the man's whereabouts. She frantically tried to search for him, trying to remember something on the scene that made him disappear. She did not leave a single place in that forest floor untouched. But she saw no traces, no footprints, _nothing. _After three days, she was convinced she had been hallucinating.

But now. But now. This guy (Kakashi, she is hopelessly sure of it) suddenly turned out of the blue with a bleeding head and other massive injuries, and every time she went back to check on him, he has not blinked away. When she stares at him longer than acceptable in her book, he does not disappear from existence. When she touches his skin, it felt real. But back then it felt real as well. Sakura could barely understand what the hell was happening.

Her thought bubble soon popped out due to the ringing of her for-business-matters-only-phone. She reached for it, and answers in her professional yet lively enough tone.

"Hello? This is Dr. Sakura Haruno speaking. Who's this?", she asks out of habit, but the bustling and curated chatter very similar to that of the hospital counter in the background all but revealed to her who the culprit is.

"Sakura? Why the hell aren't you answering your other phone? I had been ringing it for five minutes for fuck's sake." Ino says, shooing somebody trying to ask her something.

"I must have left it in the bath. Why are you calling anyway? I've already retired for the day." Sakura says, stirring her half-empty cup of coffee.

"Why am I calling you, you ask? Well, hold your tits girl, cuz I'll have you scrambling here by the time this call is finished. Your patient is awake, ma'am. The guy without a name, but has an obnoxiously silver hair? He has been shouting ever since he woke up and they're still trying to restrain him. He keeps shouting your name for some reason, and Haku says it's not the first time. So yeah! The reason why I'm calling you is that you are needed here and you need to explain why the guy knows—! Bitch, she just hung up." Ino then turns to the doctor waiting at the counter, smiling sweetly at him.

"Well, she has been notified, Sasuke."

The guy moves away from the counter and nods.

"Thanks, Ino." He begins to walk away.

Ino retracts then pushes deep the imaginary daggers she has been putting in his head.

* * *

Sakura was already by the second floor of her apartment building the moment she snapped her phone shut. What a convenient time for the guy to wake up. If they want answers, she's just as clueless. Maybe not as clueless as everyone else, but just as clueless as herself the last time the man barged in her life.

_'Well, there are certainly some perks with living this near to the hospital. I need answers. And I want it straight from that man's mouth.' _Sakura thinks as she flings herself on her bike.

Sakura's once vibrantly pink hair has now turned a pastel shade and it sways with the wind as she rushes down the street, grinding on the pedal almost as fast and as hard as when she caught news of one of her favorite patients already on his last breaths. Ten blocks, seven, five more, three blocks. Sakura halts to a stop, catches her breath, and steadies herself before she pedals once more, at a calmer pace than before.

After parking her bike, Sakura once again regulates her steps, trying to brace herself for the worse. There's only two things that could come out of this: disappointment, or relief. Whatever circumstances would generate either result, she has no idea. But she now has the chance, and she needs him to come clean about what truly happened to him, may it satisfy her need to understand or not.

She walks through the front doors.

It was Ino who immediately saw her, and instantly called one of the other nurses to guard the station. Sakura ignores her and her remarks about being _too bare-faced_ and _underdressed_ and rushes down the hall where the man's (he must be Kakashi!) room is situated.

"Sakura? Come on! I'm dying over here, girl. The man is shouting, see? You can literally hear his frantic voice from here. Everyone's asking why he's asking for you, they're all puzzled. Nooo, scratch that, we're all puzzled and stressed out, Forehead. If you knew the guy, why didn't you say anything?", Ino whines as she matches every long stride Sakura is making.

Sakura begins to quicken her pace as she hears the screaming. Kami, the guy is very loud.

"Sakura?", Ino probes once more, pursing her lips in confusion, and most probably, agony.

"I don't know him, Ino-pig." was all Sakura muttered in response.

* * *

Kakashi is flinging even when he know how pointless it is. There are restraints everywhere, and male nurses and two doctors are surrounding him, basically ensuring he couldn't go away.

As soon as Kakashi woke up, he tried to get up and remove everything attached to his body. He managed to go down the hall, but couldn't get farther because, well, he was wearing some weird hospital gown, and probably looked crazy. When they tried to cajole him to go back to his room, he panicked straight away. He could only recall to mind two things: a woman whose eyes are a lovely shade of green, and the name Sakura. So panicked was he that he opened and closed his mouth with alarming intensity, not realizing he was practically screaming her name.

Kakashi is still unsure of what is happening or why he is here, but he was sure that it was the reason he woke up. He dreamed of something, although for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was. His mind is so hazy and panicked that the dream wouldn't surface into the front of his mind no matter how hard he tries. It sits right at the edges, constantly flickering in and out of existence. Kakashi tries to calm himself, sure that he had always been a composed man in the past, but the helplessness and desperation he can feel simultaneously from his secured hands and remembering what the dream was all about, results to another explosive exasperation from him as he lets out a growl louder than the last. The process repeats itself as the nurses and doctors look at each other like they're anxiously waiting for something or someone.

After a few more minutes spent in agony, the door opens silently and in arrives, a girl Kakashi knows a little too closely. He stares with bulging recognizing eyes and his jaw slackens in recognition and remembrance. _The dream. The storm. _It has all come back to life.

Sakura stares at him with a calculating gaze, and none of the other hospital personnel tried to voice out the considerably many questions they have about the scenario. Here was a guy, who just ten seconds ago, could not find it in himself to calm the hell down, yet suddenly, at the sight of the pink-haired Dr. Haruno, he basically stops breathing and struggling to get up. Ino, on the other hand, was having none of that.

"Um, hello? Silver guy who won't stop shouting like a psychopath? Is this the Sakura you've been screaming about? If she is, you might wanna start explaining any minute now, buddy. You look like you're having a heart attack." she speaks with a tilted head and a mischievous and curious glint in her eyes. Sakura snaps out of her own trance and snaps at Ino, reprimanding her for being a bitch instead of a nurse who follows hospital protocols and proper patient care.

"Uh, if you haven't caught up yet, none of this demands protocol. It demands an aggressive pace to match the weirdness of this whole jaggey-doo situation. But yeah, if it appeases you, I'm sorry Forehead," Ino almost whispers in her friend's ear.

Almost, because everyone in the room heard it anyway. It was Sasuke who broke the silence once again.

"Right, everyone, file out of the room. We are not needed here at the moment. Dr. Haruno, if anything happens and the guy tries to shamelessly escape, do alert us."

Sakura nods and glares at Ino to scoot away with the rest of the group. She reluctantly obliges.

As everyone made to do their exits, Sakura kept her gaze at the door, not yet quite sure how to behave about anything concerning this man at all. This is a crazy whirlwind, one that is so full of mystery and familiarity, she would've run away if she were a weaker man. Instead, she resorts to pretending she had to properly lock the door as she summons the whole earth to back her up, or swallow her whole. Either way is fine with her.

"Sakura?", the name once more tumbles from his lips. She faces him then, exceedingly calm on the outside and levels her stare in his eyes, only to flutter them away at the emotions she found embedded in them; Gentleness, melancholy, shock, grief, and others she can't fare to recognize.

"How-how do you know me? I never told you my name.", She starts, once again transfixed by the intensity of his expressions and his eyes.

The man, now truly Kakashi, lets out a ghost of a smile. "I'm pretty sure you did when we met during the storm, no? I don't think I have the apt skills of a clairvoyant to just guess it out of the blue," Kakashi retorts, and suddenly, lets out a tired smile. "You're probably puzzled and confused right now, and I'm sorry if I cannot answer all of your questions as I've pretty much once again exhausted my body. But if you could come back, and be patient with me, then I can share to you what had just recently settled itself in my mind."

Maybe it was the way he suddenly seemed at home with his posture no longer tensed and stoic or the manner he spoke to her with a sense of companionship and ordinariness, but Sakura found herself relaxed and exhausted as well. The day and its wake have suddenly loomed on her, and she could finally put some rest to her agitated mind.

"You sure you won't disappear? You had a penchant for that the last time I saw you." She says with a sheen of amusement in her eyes.

Kakashi let out a chuckle. "Yes, I won't disappear. That was only temporary anyway." He says and proceeds to marvel at her, eyes far away and probing at the same time. She is tempted to ask what he meant, but he recognizes the gleam of a question in her gaze immediately and slightly shakes his head before stuffing his face in the palms of his hands.

Tomorrow, then.

Sakura lets out another breath and waits for him to lock his eyes on her once more before she speaks up. "Alright, Kakashi. I'll see you tomorrow. G'night."

Kakashi nods and whispers, "Good night. Sakura."

* * *

Kakashi stares straight ahead and recalls with great clarity now, what the dream had been about. It was weird, but in a nice way, to stare and look at a different Sakura, although he was assured they were very much remnants of the same soul.

Kakashi wonders, as he drifts off to a light slumber if he also held the same remnants of his past soul.


End file.
